Crypto Academy Week 4 Homework Post for Professor @yohan2on on Introduction to Decentralized Finance (DeFi) – A new Fintech Revolution (Part 1), answered by @cryptocheta

Hello Steemians! It's another wonderful week of lecture, hope we all are following up because " we learn every day" is very true from what I have seen in this week's Crypto Academy. As usual, I enjoyed the lecture of @yohan2on about " Introduction to Decentralized Finance (DeFi) – A new Fintech Revolution (Part 1)
Great work and now is the time for me to do my homework.

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Homework task: Briefly explain each of the following DeFi Dapps

1. Maker
2. Compound
3. Synthetix
4. bZx
5. Uniswap

(1) Maker is a stablecoin project where each stablecoin (called DAI) is pegged to the United States Dollar and is supported by collateral in the form of cryptocurrency. Stablecoins give the programmability of cryptocurrency without the downside of volatility that you see with “traditional” cryptos like Bitcoin or Ethereum.

You can just try creating your personal DAI stablecoin on the Maker Oasis dapp. Maker is higher than just a stablecoin project, though it aims to be a decentralized savings bank. People who keep a separate but related token, MKR, can vote on major decisions like the Stability Fee (this is similar to how the Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee votes on the Fed Funds rate).

A different stablecoin with a distinctive architecture is USD Coin (USDC), where each USDC token is backed by one US dollar kept in an audited bank account.

(2) Compound

A Compound is a blockchain-based borrowing and lending dapp you can lend your cryptocurrency out and earn a profit on it. Or perhaps you need some money to buy groceries or pay the rent, but your funds are tied up in your cryptocurrency investments? You can deposit your cryptocurrency to the Compound smart contract as a guarantee, and borrow against it. The Compound contract automatically pairs borrowers and lenders and sets interest rates dynamically based on supply and demand. And other popular borrow/lend dapps are Aave and dYdX. Aggregators like LoanScan trace borrow/lend interest rates across the different dapps, so you can shop around for the best rates.

(3) Synthetix

Synthetix is a platform that lets users create and exchange synthetic versions of assets like cryptos, traditional currencies like the Euro, gold, and silver. These synthetic assets are supported by excess collateral locked into the Synthetix contracts.

(4) bZx

bZx protocol is a collection of smart contracts built on top of Ethereum. The protocol concentrates on lending and margin trading and it is usually similar to another popular DeFi product called dYdX. The greatest difference between the two margin trading protocols is the basic use of tokens in the bZx protocol. There are three principal tokens in the bZx system: pTokens, iTokens, and BZRX tokens. Each of the three is ERC20 tokens and each plays an important role in how bZx functions.

Tom Bean and Kyle Kistner are the co-founders of bZx and they created the idea for the protocol in August 2017.

This is a brief history

February 2018 bZx whitepaper was released
December 2018 bZx allocates $7.8 million in their First Coin Offering of BZRX tokens
June 2019 Fulcrum, the trading front end for the bZx protocol, is started.
October 2019 Torque, the lending front-end for the bZx protocol, is started.

(5) Uniswap

Uniswap is a crypto exchange that runs completely on smart contracts, allowing you to trade popular tokens directly from your wallet. This is different from an exchange like Coinbase, which stores your cryptocurrency for you and keeps your private keys for safekeeping. Uniswap uses an innovative mechanism known as Automated Market Making to automatically verify trades near the market price. Adding to trading, any user can become a liquidity provider, by supplying cryptocurrency to the Uniswap contract and gaining a share of the exchange fees. It is called “pooling”.
Another popular Decentralized Exchange platforms add Bancor, Kyber, IDEX, 0x, AirSwap, Paradex, and Radar Relay. All have somewhat distinctive architectures.

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Conclusion
It's a great idea @steemitblog for this educational package or initiative, I have learned so many things since the start of this academy, please keep up the fine lectures.

Written by @cryptocheta

Thanks to you professor @yohan2on

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